The present invention relates to a culinary tool that both extrudes and minces or cubes food materials, such as vegetables, fruits, herbs, cheeses and other foods.
Culinary tools that slice, grate or shred food have become staples in kitchens because they offer a timesaving alternative to manual food preparation. Such culinary tools are offered in multiple shapes and sizes, with many of them being in the form of electrically powered food processors. While such electrically powered processors are easy to use, they usually are designed for stationary use, and not portable, hand held operation. On the other hand, because of their portability and ease of use, hand held culinary tools continue to become more popular with food preparers, even though they are usually less powerful than electrically powered food processors.
There are a variety of hand held culinary tools that perform certain food processing operations, for example, slicing, grating, extruding or shredding. Some of these of these hand held tools even are equipped to perform multiple food operations. For example, one particular culinary tool is configured to both extrude and cube garlic. This culinary tool includes a cutting grid and a ram located in an inner part of a body. The inner part is threaded and the body includes a head. As the head is rotated multiple times around a head axis that is coincident with an axis of the ram, it engages the threads to push the ram toward the cutting grid, thereby extruding garlic through the cutting grid. The tool also includes a blade that is located near the cutting grid, and attached to the body. As the body is rotated, the blade rotates in a circle around the ram axis to cut garlic extruded through the cutting grid into cubes.
Although the above culinary tool is generally suitable to extrude and cube garlic, its operation is somewhat awkward due to the amount of manual rotation required to extrude and cube the garlic. In addition, because the blade is only about half as wide as the cutting grid, and sweeps in an arc around the rear axis, the size of the cubes it cuts can vary undesirably. Further, the tool itself is quite complicated, which can make cleaning and reassembly time consuming and frustrating. Accordingly, there remains room for improvement in the area of culinary tools that process food materials, that are easy to operate, and that are relatively uncomplicated for ease of operation and cleaning.